"Yes, yes, dearest; I know it's customary to ask leave, and I do ask it. But you must let me go. I—I never go anywhere, I never do anything; all my life is slipping away, just as Aunt Valeria's did."
The old woman looked into the young face and read the signs there misguidedly enough to say:
"Well, well, we can't very well afford it, but perhaps a little change—"
"I'll make it up, you'll see."
No later than that same afternoon the girl was on her way. She had given Ethan no warning—did not even know if she would find him still at the hotel from which he had written to Julia; but she drove straight to the Wharton House, learned that he was in, and sent up word that a lady wanted to see him.
While she sat there, oblivious of the expensive ugliness of the empty hotel parlor, the thought of seeing Ethan after all these years did not shut out the haunting remembrance of her grandmother. If that scorner of deceptions could see her now! If she ever came to know that Val, whom she trusted, had acted this complicated lie in order, most unmaiden-like, to beg a stolen interview with a man! She cringed at the thought of the old woman's high unsparing scorn. "Why do I always think of her! Other girls don't take even their fathers and mothers so seriously. They aren't haunted by them." She hunched her shoulders with discomfiture. Why didn't Ethan come? What would her grandmother say? It would be distinctly awful to be despised by her. Should she save her reputation by running away without seeing Ethan? It seemed a sudden blessed way of escape from domestic degradation. She half rose, staring absently at the sofa pattern. Suddenly the perplexed eyes widened; the vague design of the satin damask had wrought itself into her brain. Out of the scrolls and arabesques a face seemed staring at her. With a twist of pain she recognized it—that sorrowfullest of all faces—that face of some one who never had a chance. The poor dim ghost that had been shut up so long in Aunt Valeria's dusty heap of clay, that had appeared to Val like a shadowy face at a prison grating—it had escaped at last: it was here!
As she sank back in the corner, the old tide of revolt rose high within her; but the flood to-day was chill with fear of failure, and bitter with the memory of those others who had been overwhelmed. Val had herself given up all "chances" for this one that she was reaching out for to-day. She was here to put that one to proof, and— Ethan was at the door! In that first instant of his non-recognition her heart turned sick, so cold he looked, and so remote, forbidding even. She got up and came forward.
Ethan cried out in astonishment, throwing down his hat:
"You! No, not really!"
"Yes."